In his autobiography, published posthumously in 1960, Richard Goldschmidt wrote: "I am confident that in twenty years my work], which is now ignored, will be given an honorable place in the history of evolutionary thought." The publication of this edition, now reissued with a new introduction by Stephen Jay Gould, proves Goldschmidt's prediction to be correct.
Goldschmidt, one of the world's great geneticists, delivered the prestigious Silliman lectures at Yale University in 1939 and published his remarks in 1940 as The Material Basis of Evolution. His intent was to inquire into...